LAFCADIO HEARN (continued 3)

V

"The duty of Science," answers Science, "is to systematize human experience, not to theorize about ghosts. And the judgment of the time, even in Japan, sustains this position taken by Science. What is now being taught below there,—my doctrines, or the doctrines of the Man in the Straw Sandals?"

Then the Stone Buddha and I look down upon the college together; and as we gaze, the smile of the Buddha—perhaps because of a change in the light—seems to me to have changed its expression, to have become an ironical smile. Nevertheless he is contemplating the fortress of a more than formidable enemy. In all that teaching of four hundred youths by thirty-three teachers, there is no teaching of faith, but only teaching of fact,—only teaching of the definite results of the systematization of human experience. And I am absolutely certain that if I were to question, concerning the things of the Buddha, any of those thirty-three instructors (saving one dear old man of seventy, the Professor of Chinese), I should receive no reply. For they belong unto the new generation, holding that such topics are fit for the consideration of Men-in-Straw-Rain—coats only, and that in this twenty-sixth year of Meiji, the scholar should occupy himself only with the results of the systematization of human experience. Yet the systematization of human experience in no wise enlightens us as to the Whence, the Whither, or, worst of all!—the Why.

"The Laws of Existence which proceed from a cause,—the cause of these hath the Buddha explained, as also the destruction of the same. Even of such truths is the great Sramana the teacher."

And I ask myself, Must the teaching of Science in this land efface at last the memory of the teaching of the Buddha?

"As for that," makes answer Science, "the test of the right of a faith to live must be sought in its power to accept and to utilize my revelations. Science neither affirms what it cannot prove, nor denies that which it cannot rationally disprove. Theorizing about the Unknowable, it recognizes and pities as a necessity of the human mind. You and the Man-in-the-Straw-Rain-coat may harmlessly continue to theorize for such time as your theories advance in lines parallel with my facts, but no longer."

And seeking inspiration from the deep irony of Buddha's smile, I theorize in parallel lines.

VI

The whole tendency of modern knowledge, the whole tendency of scientific teaching, is toward the ultimate conviction that the Unknowable, even as the Brahma of ancient Indian thought, is inaccessible to prayer. Not a few of us can feel that Western Faith must finally pass away forever, leaving us to our own resources when our mental manhood shall have been attained, even as the fondest of mothers must leave her children at last. In that far day her work will all have been done; she will have fully developed our recognition of certain eternal spiritual laws; she will have fully ripened our profounder human sympathies; she will have fully prepared us by her parables and fairy tales, by her gentler falsehoods, for the terrible truth of existence;—prepared us for the knowledge that there is no divine love save the love of man for man; that we have no All-Father, no Saviour, no angel guardians; that we have no possible refuge but in ourselves.

Yet even in that strange day we shall only have stumbled to the threshold of the revelation given by the Buddha so many ages ago: "Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be ye a refuge unto yourselves. Betake yourselves to no other refuge. The Buddhas are only teachers. Hold ye fast to the truth as to a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to any beside yourselves."

Does the utterance shock? Yet the prospect of such a void awakening from our long fair dream of celestial aid and celestial love would never be the darkest prospect possible for man. There is a darker, also foreshadowed by Eastern thought. Science may hold in reserve for us discoveries infinitely more appalling than the realization of Richter's dream,—the dream of the dead children seeking vainly their father Jesus. In the negation of the materialist even, there was a faith of consolation—self-assurance of individual cessation, of oblivion eternal. But for the existing thinker there is no such faith. It may remain for us to learn, after having vanquished all difficulties possible to meet upon this tiny sphere, that there await us obstacles to overcome beyond it,—obstacles vaster than any system of worlds,—obstacles weightier than the whole inconceivable Cosmos with its centuries of millions of systems; that our task is only beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable and unthinkable Time. We may have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking—that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;—that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;—and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives.

VII

JIUJUTSU

Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So is it with all things.... Firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life. Hence he who relies on his own strength shall not conquer.

Tao-Te-King.

I

There is one building in the grounds of the Government College quite different in structure from the other edifices. Except that it is furnished with horizontally sliding glass windows instead of paper ones, it might be called a purely Japanese building. It is long, broad, and of one story; and it contains but a single huge room, of which the elevated floor is thickly cushioned with one hundred mats. It has a Japanese name, too,—Zuihōkwan,—signifying "The Hall of Our Holy Country;" and the Chinese characters which form that name were painted upon the small tablet above its entrance by the hand of a Prince of the Imperial blood. Within there is no furniture; nothing but another tablet and two pictures hanging upon the wall. One of the pictures represents the famous "White-Tiger Band" of seventeen brave boys who voluntarily sought death for loyalty's sake in the civil war. The other is a portrait in oil of the aged and much beloved Professor of Chinese, Akizuki of Aidzu, a noted warrior in his youth, when it required much more to make a soldier and a gentleman than it does to-day. And the tablet bears Chinese characters written by the hand of Count Katsu, which signify: "Profound knowledge is the best of possessions."

But what is the knowledge taught in this huge unfurnished apartment? It is something called jiujutsu. And what is jiujutsu?

Here I must premise that I know practically nothing of jiujutsu. One must begin to study it in early youth, and must continue the study a very long time in order to learn it even tolerably well. To become an expert requires seven years of constant practice, even presupposing natural aptitudes of an uncommon order. I can give no detailed account of jiujutsu, but merely venture some general remarks about its principle.

Jiujutsu is the old samurai art of fighting without weapons. To the uninitiated it looks like wrestling. Should you happen to enter the Zuihōkwan while jiujutsu is being practiced, you would see a crowd of students watching ten or twelve lithe young comrades, barefooted and barelimbed, throwing each other about on the matting. The dead silence might seem to you very strange. No word is spoken, no sign of approbation or of amusement is given, no face even smiles. Absolute impassiveness is rigidly exacted by the rules of the school of jiujutsu. But probably only this impassibility of all, this hush of numbers, would impress you as remarkable.

A professional wrestler would observe more. He would see that those' young men are very cautious about putting forth their strength, and that the grips, holds, and flings are both peculiar and risky. In spite of the care exercised, he would judge the whole performance to be dangerous play, and would be tempted, perhaps, to advise the adoption of Western "scientific" rules.

The real thing, however,—not the play,—is much more dangerous than a Western wrestler could guess at sight. The teacher there, slender and light as he seems, could probably disable an ordinary wrestler in two minutes. Jiujutsu is not an art of display at all: it is not a training for that sort of skill exhibited to public audiences; it is an art of self-defense in the most exact sense of the term; it is an art of war. The master of that art is able, in one moment, to put an untrained antagonist completely hors de combat. By some terrible legerdemain he suddenly dislocates a shoulder, unhinges a joint, bursts a tendon, or snaps a bone,—without any apparent effort. He is much more than an athlete: he is an anatomist. And he knows also touches that kill—as by lightning. But this fatal knowledge he is under oath never to communicate except under such conditions as would render its abuse almost impossible. Tradition exacts that it be given only to men of perfect self-command and of unimpeachable moral character.

The fact, however, to which I want to call attention is that the master of jiujutsu never relies upon his own strength. He scarcely uses his own strength in the greatest emergency. Then what does he use? Simply the strength of his antagonist. The force of the enemy is the only means by which that enemy is overcome. The art of jiujutsu teaches you to rely for victory solely upon the strength of your opponent; and the greater his strength, the worse for him and the better for you. I remember that I was not a little astonished when one of the greatest teachers of jiujutsu[1] told me that he found it extremely difficult to teach a certain very strong pupil, whom I had innocently imagined to be the best in the class. On asking why, I was answered: "Because he relies upon his enormous muscular strength, and uses it." The very name "jiujutsu" means to conquer by yielding.

I fear I cannot explain at all; I can only suggest. Every one knows what a "counter" in boxing means. I cannot use it for an exact simile, because the boxer who counters opposes his whole force to the impetus of the other; while a jiujutsu expert does precisely the contrary. Still there remains this resemblance between a counter in boxing and a yielding in jiujutsu,—that the suffering is in both cases due to the uncontrollable forward impetus of the man who receives it. I may venture then to say, loosely, that in jiujutsu there is a sort of counter for every twist, wrench, pull, push, or bend: only, the jiujutsu expert does not oppose such movements at all. No: he yields to them. But he does much more than yield to them. He aids them with a wicked sleight that causes the assailant to put out his own shoulder, to fracture his own arm, or, in a desperate case, even to break his own neck or back.

II

With even this vaguest of explanations, you will already have been able to perceive that the real wonder of jiujutsu is not in the highest possible skill of its best professor, but in the uniquely Oriental idea which the whole art expresses. What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching,—never to oppose force to force, but only to direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely by his own strength,—to vanquish him solely by his own effort? Surely none! The Occidental mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles. Yet how fine a symbolism of Intelligence as a means to foil brute force! Much more than a science of defense is this jiujutsu: it is a philosophical system; it is an economical system; it is an ethical system (indeed, I had forgotten to say that a very large part of jiujutsu-training is purely moral); and it is, above all, the expression of a racial genius as yet but faintly perceived by those Powers who dream of further aggrandizement in the East.

Twenty-five years ago,—and even more recently,—-foreigners might have predicted, with every appearance of reason, that Japan would adopt not only the dress, but the manners of the Occident; not only our means of rapid transit and communication, but also our principles of architecture; not only our industries and our applied science, but likewise our metaphysics and our dogmas. Some really believed that the country would soon be thrown open to foreign settlement; that Western capital would be tempted by extraordinary privileges to aid in the development of various resources; and even that the nation would eventually proclaim, through Imperial Edict, its sudden conversion to what we call Christianity. But such beliefs were due to an unavoidable but absolute ignorance of the character of the race,—of its deeper capacities, of its foresight, of its immemorial spirit of independence. That Japan might only be practicing jiujutsu, nobody supposed for a moment: indeed at that time nobody in the West had ever heard of jiujutsu.

And, nevertheless, jiujutsu it all was. Japan adopted a military system founded upon the best experience of France and Germany, with the result that she can call into the field a disciplined force of 250,000 men, supported by a formidable artillery. She created a strong navy, comprising some of the finest cruisers in the world;—modeling her naval system upon the best English and French teaching. She made herself dockyards under French direction, and built or bought steamers to carry her products to Korea, China, Manilla, Mexico, India, and the tropics of the Pacific. She constructed, both for military and commercial purposes, nearly two thousand miles of railroad. With American and English help she established the cheapest and perhaps the most efficient telegraph and postal service in existence. She built lighthouses to such excellent purpose that her coast is said to be the best lighted in either hemisphere; and she put into operation a signal service not inferior to that of the United States. From America she obtained also a telephone system, and the best methods of electric lighting. She modeled her public-school system upon a thorough study of the best results obtained in Germany, France, and America, but regulated it so as to harmonize perfectly with her own institutions. She founded a police system upon a French model, but shaped it to absolute conformity with her own particular social requirements. At first she imported machinery for her mines, her mills, her gun-factories, her railways, and hired numbers of foreign experts: she is now dismissing all her teachers. But what she has done and is doing would require volumes even to mention. Suffice to say, in conclusion, that she has selected and adopted the best of everything represented by our industries, by our applied sciences, by our economical, financial, and legal experience; availing herself in every case of the highest results only, and invariably shaping her acquisitions to meet her own needs.

Now in all this she has adopted nothing for a merely imitative reason. On the contrary, she has approved and taken only what can help her to increase her strength. She has made herself able to dispense with nearly all foreign technical instruction; and she has kept firmly in her own hands, by the shrewdest legislation, all of her own resources. But she has not adopted Western dress, Western habits of life, Western architecture, or Western religion; since the introduction of any of these, especially the last, would have diminished instead of augmenting her force. Despite her railroad and steamship lines, her telegraphs and telephones, her postal service and her express companies, her steel artillery and magazine-rifles, her universities and technical schools, she remains just as Oriental to-day as she was a thousand years ago. She has been able to remain herself, and to profit to the utmost possible limit by the strength of the enemy. She has been, and still is, defending herself by the most admirable system of intellectual self-defense ever heard of,—by a marvelous national jiujutsu.

III

Before me lies an album more than thirty years old. It is filled with photographs taken at the time when Japan was entering upon her experiments with foreign dress and with foreign institutions. All are photographs of samurai or daimyô; and many possess historical value as reflections of the earliest effects of foreign influence upon native fashions.

Naturally the military class were the earliest subjects of the new influence; and they seem to have attempted several curious compromises between the Western and the Eastern costume. More than a dozen photographs represent feudal leaders surrounded by their retainers,—all in a peculiar garb of their own composition. They have frock coats, waistcoats, and trousers of foreign style and material; but under the coat the long silk girdle or obi is still worn, simply for the purpose of holding the swords. (For the samurai were never in a literal sense traîneurs de sabre; and their formidable but exquisitely finished weapons were never made to be slung at the side,—besides being in most cases much too long to be carried in the Western way.) The cloth of the suits is broadcloth; but the samurai will not surrender his mon, or crest, and tries to adapt it to his novel attire by all manner of devices. One has faced the lappets of his coat with white silk; and his family device is either dyed or embroidered upon the silk six times—three mon to each lappet. All the men, or nearly all, wear European watches with showy guards; one is examining his timepiece curiously, probably a very recent acquisition. All wear Western shoes, too,—shoes with elastic sides. But none seem to have yet adopted the utterly abominable European hat—destined, unfortunately, to become popular at a later day. They still retain the jingasa,—a strong wooden headpiece, heavily lacquered in scarlet and gold. And the jingasa and the silken girdle remain the only satisfactory parts of their astounding uniform. The trousers and coats are ill fitting; the shoes are inflicting slow tortures; there is an indescribably constrained, slouchy, shabby look common to all thus attired. They have not only ceased to feel free: they are conscious of not looking their best. The incongruities are not grotesque enough to be amusing; they are merely ugly and painful. What foreigner in that time could have persuaded himself that the Japanese were not about to lose forever their beautiful taste in dress?

Other photographs show still more curious results of foreign influences. Here are samurai who refuse to adopt the Western fashions, but who have compromised with the new mania by having their haori and hakama made of the heaviest and costliest English broadcloth,—a material utterly unsuited for such use both because of its weight and its inelasticity. Already you can see that creases have been formed which no hot iron can ever smooth away.

It is certainly an æsthetic relief to turn from these portraits to those of a few conservatives who paid no attention to the mania at all, and clung to their native warrior garb to the very last. Here are nagabakama worn by horsemen,—and jin-baori, or war-coats, superbly embroidered,—and kamishimo,—and shirts of mail,—and full suits of armor. Here also are various forms of kaburi,—the strange but imposing head-dresses anciently worn on state occasions by princes and by samurai of high rank,—curious cobwebby structures, of some light black material. In all this there is dignity, beauty, or the terrible grace of war.

But everything is totally eclipsed by the last photograph of the collection,—a handsome youth with the sinister, splendid gaze of a falcon,—Matsudaira Buzen-no-Kami, in full magnificence of feudal war costume. One hand bears the tasseled signal-wand of a leader of armies; the other rests on the marvelous hilt of his sword. His helmet is a blazing miracle; the steel upon his breast and shoulders was wrought by armorers whose names are famed in all the museums of the West. The cords of his war-coat are golden; and a wondrous garment of heavy silk—all embroidered with billowings and dragonings of gold—flows from his mailed waist to his feet, like a robe of fire. And this is no dream;—this was!—I am gazing at a solar record of one real figure of mediæval life! How the man flames in his steel and silk and gold, like some splendid iridescent beetle,—but a War beetle, all horns and mandibles and menace despite its dazzlings of jewel-color!

IV

From the princely magnificence of feudal costume as worn by Matsudaira—Buzen-no-Kami to the nondescript garments of the transition period, how vast a fall! Certainly the native dress and the native taste in dress might well have seemed doomed to pass away forever. And when even the Imperial Court had temporarily adopted Parisian modes, few foreigners could have doubted that the whole nation was about to change garb. As a fact, there then began in the chief cities that passing mania for Western fashions which was reflected in the illustrated journals of Europe, and which created for a while the impression that picturesque Japan had become transformed into a land of "loud" tweeds, chimney-pot hats, and swallow-tail coats. But in the capital itself to-day, among a thousand passers-by, you may see scarcely one in Western dress, excepting, of course, the uniformed soldiers, students, and police. The former mania really represented a national experiment; and the results of that experiment were not according to Western expectation. Japan has adopted various styles of Western uniform,[1] with some excellent modifications, for her army, her navy, and her police, simply because such attire is the best possible for such callings. Foreign civil costume has been adopted by the Japanese official world, but only to be worn during office-hours in buildings of Western construction furnished with modern desks and chairs.[2] At home even the general, the admiral, the judge, the police-inspector, resume the national garb. And, finally, both teachers and students in all but the primary schools are expected to wear uniform, as the educational training is partly military. This obligation, once stringent, has, however, been considerably relaxed; in many schools the uniform being now obligatory only during drill-time and upon certain ceremonial occasions. In all Kyūshū schools, except the Normal, the students are free to wear their robes, straw sandals, and enormous straw hats, when not on parade. But everywhere after class-hours both teachers and students return at home to their kimono and their girdles of white crape silk.

In brief, then, Japan has fairly resumed her national dress; and it is to be hoped that she will never again abandon it. Not only is it the sole attire perfectly adapted to her domestic habits; it is also, perhaps, the most dignified, the most comfortable, and the most healthy in the world. In some respects, indeed, the native fashions have changed during the era of Meiji much more than in previous eras; but this was largely due to the abolition of the military caste. As to forms, the change has been slight; as to color, it has been great. The fine taste of the race still appears in the beautiful tints and colors and designs of those silken or cotton textures woven for apparel. But the tints are paler, the colors are darker, than those worn by the last generation;—the whole national costume, in all its varieties, not excepting even the bright attire of children and of young girls, is much more sober of tone than in feudal days. All the wondrous old robes of dazzling colors have vanished from public life: you can study them now only in the theatres, or in those marvelous picture-books reflecting the fantastic and beautiful visions of the Japanese classic drama, which preserves the Past.

V

Indeed, to give up the native dress would involve the costly necessity of changing nearly all the native habits of life. Western costume is totally unsuited to a Japanese interior; and would render the national squatting, or kneeling, posture extremely painful or difficult for the wearer. The adoption of Western dress would thus necessitate the adoption of Western domestic habits: the introduction into home of chairs for resting, tables for eating, stoves or fireplaces for warmth (since the warmth of the native robes alone renders these Western comforts at present unnecessary), carpets for floors, glass for windows,—in short, a host of luxuries which the people have always been well able to do without. There is no furniture (according to the European sense of the term) in a Japanese home,—no beds, tables, or chairs. There may be one small book-case, or rather "book-box;" and there are nearly always a pair of chests of drawers in some recess hidden by sliding paper screens; but such articles are quite unlike any Western furniture. As a rule, you will see nothing in a Japanese room except a small brazier of bronze or porcelain, for smoking purposes; a kneeling-mat, or cushion, according to season; and in the alcove only, a picture or a flower vase. For thousands of years Japanese life has been on the floor. Soft as a hair mattress and always immaculately clean, the floor is at once the couch, the dining-table, and most often the writing-table; although there exist tiny pretty writing-tables about one foot high. And the vast economy of such habits of life renders it highly improbable they will ever be abandoned, especially while the pressure of population and the struggle of life continue to increase. It should also be remembered that there exists no precedent of a highly civilized people—such as were the Japanese before the Western aggression upon them—abandoning ancestral habits out of a mere spirit of imitation. Those who imagine the Japanese to be merely imitative also imagine them to be savages. As a fact, they are not imitative at all: they are assimilative and adoptive only, and that to the degree of genius.

It is probable that careful study of Western experience with fire-proof building-material will eventually result in some changes in Japanese municipal architecture. Already, in some quarters of Tōkyō, there are streets of brick houses. But these brick dwellings are matted in the ancient manner; and their tenants follow the domestic habits of their ancestors. The future architecture of brick or stone is not likely to prove a mere copy of Western construction; it is almost certain to develop new and purely Oriental features of rare interest.

Those who believe the Japanese dominated by some blind admiration for everything Occidental might certainly expect at the open ports to find less of anything purely Japanese (except curios) than in the interior: less of Japanese architecture; less of national dress, manners, and customs; less of native religion, and shrines, and temples. But exactly the reverse is the fact. Foreign buildings there are, but, as a general rule, in the foreign concessions only, and for the use of foreigners. The usual exceptions are a fire-proof post-office, a custom-house, and perhaps a few breweries and cotton-mills. But not only is Japanese architecture excellently represented at all the foreign ports: it is better represented there than in almost any city of the interior. The edifices heighten, broaden, expand; but they remain even more Oriental than elsewhere. At Kobe, at Nagasaki, at Ōsaka, at Yokohama, everything that is essentially and solely Japanese (except moral character) accentuates as if in defiance of foreign influence. Whoever has looked over Kobe from some lofty roof or balcony will have seen perhaps the best possible example of what I mean,—the height, the queerness, the charm of a Japanese port in the nineteenth century, the blue-gray sea of tile-slopes ridged and banded with white, the cedar world of gables and galleries and architectural conceits and whimsicalities indescribable. And nowhere outside of the Sacred City of Kyōto, can you witness a native religious festival to better advantage than in the open ports; while the multitude of shrines, of temples, of torii, of all the sights and symbols of Shintō and of Buddhism, are scarcely paralleled in any city of the interior except Nikko, and the ancient capitals of Nara and Saikyō. No! the more one studies the characteristics of the open ports, the more one feels that the genius of the race will never voluntarily yield to Western influence, beyond the rules of jiujutsu.

VI

The expectation that Japan would speedily announce to the world her adoption of Christianity was not so unreasonable as some other expectations of former days. Yet it might well seem to have been more so. There were no precedents upon which to build so large a hope. No Oriental race has ever yet been converted to Christianity. Even under British rule, the wonderful labors of the Catholic propaganda in India have been brought to a standstill. In China, after centuries of missions, the very name of Christianity is detested,—and not without cause, since no small number of aggressions upon China have been made in the name of Western religion. Nearer home, we have made even less progress in our efforts to convert Oriental races. There is not the ghost of a hope for the conversion of the Turks, the Arabs, the Moors, or of any Islamic people; and the memory of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews only serves to create a smile. But, even leaving the Oriental races out of the question, we have no conversions whatever to boast of. Never within modern history has Christendom been able to force the acceptance of its dogmas upon a people able to maintain any hope of national existence. The nominal[1] success of missions among a few savage tribes, or the vanishing Maori races, only proves the rule; and unless we accept the rather sinister declaration of Napoleon that missionaries may have great political usefulness, it is not easy to escape the conclusion that the whole work of the foreign mission societies has been little more than a vast expenditure of energy, time, and money, to no real purpose.

In this last decade of the nineteenth century, at all events, the reason should be obvious. A religion means much more than mere dogma about the supernatural: it is the synthesis of the whole ethical experience of a race, the earliest foundation, in many cases, of its wiser laws, and the record, as well as the result, of its social evolution. It is thus essentially a part of the race-life, and cannot possibly be replaced in any natural manner by the ethical and social experience of a totally alien people,—that is to say, by a totally alien religion. And no nation in a healthy social state can voluntarily abandon the faith so profoundly identified with its ethical life. A nation may reshape its dogmas: it may willingly even accept another faith; but it will not voluntarily cast away its older belief, even when the latter has lost all ethical or social usefulness. When China accepted Buddhism, she gave up neither the moral codes of her ancient sages, nor her primitive ancestor-worship; when Japan accepted Buddhism, she did not forsake the Way of the Gods. Parallel examples are yielded by the history of the religions of antique Europe. Only religions the most tolerant can be voluntarily accepted by races totally alien to those that evolved them; and even then only as an addition to what they already possess, never as a substitute for it. Wherefore the great success of the ancient Buddhist missions. Buddhism was an absorbing but never a supplanting power: it incorporated alien faiths into its colossal system, and gave them new interpretation. But the religion of Islam and the religion of Christianity—Western Christianity—have always been religions essentially intolerant, incorporating nothing and zealous to supplant everything. To introduce Christianity, especially into an Oriental country, necessitates the destruction not only of the native faith but of the native social systems as well. Now the lesson of history is that such wholesale destruction, can be accomplished only by force, and, in the case of a highly complex society, only by the most brutal force. And force, the principal instrument of Christian propagandism in the past, is still the force behind our missions. Only we have, or affect to have, substituted money power and menace for the franker edge of the sword; occasionally fulfilling the menace for commercial reasons in proof of our Christian professions. We force missionaries upon China, for example, under treaty clauses extorted by war; and pledge ourselves to support them with gunboats, and to exact enormous indemnities for the lives of such as get themselves killed. So China pays blood-money at regular intervals, and is learning more and more each year to understand the value of what we call Christianity. And the saying of Emerson, that by some a truth can never be comprehended until its light happens to fall upon a fact, has been recently illustrated by some honest protests against the immorality of missionary aggressions in China,—protests which would never have been listened to before it was discovered that the mission troubles were likely to react against purely commercial interests.

But in spite of the foregoing considerations there was really at one time fair reason for believing the nominal conversion of Japan quite possible. Men could not forget that after the Japanese Government had been forced by political necessity to extirpate the wonderful Jesuit missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the very word Christian had become a term of hatred and scorn.[2]

But the world had changed since then; Christianity had changed; and more than thirty different Christian sects were ready to compete for the honor of converting Japan. Out of so large a variety of dogmas, representing the principal shades both of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy, Japan might certainly be able to choose a form of Christianity to her own taste! And the conditions of the country were more propitious than ever before for the introduction of some Western religion. The whole social system had been disorganized to the very core; Buddhism had been disestablished, and was tottering under the blow; Shintō appeared to be incapable of resistance; the great military caste had been abolished; the system of rule had been changed; the provinces had been shaken by war; the Mikado, veiled for centuries, had shown himself to his astonished people; the tumultuous flood of new ideas threatened to sweep away all customs and to wreck all beliefs; and the preaching of Christianity had been once more tolerated by law. Nor was this all. In the hour of its prodigious efforts to reconstruct society, the Government had actually considered the question of Christianity—just as shrewdly and as impartially as it had studied the foreign educational, military, and naval systems. A commission was instructed to report upon the influence of Christianity in checking crime and vice abroad. The result confirmed the impartial verdict of Kaempffer, in the seventeenth century, upon the ethics of the Japanese: "They profess a great respect and veneration for their Gods, and worship them in various ways. And I think I may affirm that, in the practice of virtue, in purity of life, and outward devotion, they far outdo the Christians."

In short, it was wisely decided that the foreign religion, besides its inappropriateness to the conditions of Oriental society, had proved itself less efficacious as an ethical influence in the West than Buddhism had done in the East. Certainly, in the great jiujutsu there could have been little to gain, but much to lose, by a patriarchal society established on the principle of reciprocal duties, through the adoption of the teaching that a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife.[3]

The hope of making Japan Christian by Imperial edict has passed; and with the reorganization of society, the chances of making Christianity, by any means whatever, the national religion, grow less and less. Probably missionaries must be tolerated for some time longer, in spite of their interference in matters altogether outside of their profession; but they will accomplish no moral good, and in the interim they will be used by those whom they desire to use. In 1894 there were in Japan some eight hundred Protestant, ninety-two Roman Catholic, and three Greek Catholic missionaries; and the total expenditure for all the foreign missions in Japan must represent not much less than a million dollars a year,—probably represents more. As a result of this huge disbursement, the various Protestant sects claim to have made about 50,000 converts, and the Catholics an equal number; leaving some thirty-nine million nine hundred thousand unconverted souls. Conventions, and very malignant ones, forbid all unfavorable criticism of mission reports; but in spite of them I must express my candid opinion that even the above figures are not altogether trustworthy. Concerning the Roman Catholic missions, it is worthy of note that they profess with far smaller means to have done as much work as their rivals; and that even their enemies acknowledge a certain solidity in that work—which begins, rationally enough, with the children. But it is difficult not to feel skeptical as to mission reports: when one knows that among the lowest classes of Japanese there are numbers ready to profess conversion for the sake of obtaining pecuniary assistance or employment; when one knows that poor boys pretend to become Christians for the sake of obtaining instruction in some foreign language; when one hears constantly of young men, who, after professing Christianity for a time, openly return to their ancient gods; when one sees—immediately after the distribution by missionaries of foreign contributions for public relief in time of flood, famine, or earthquake—sudden announcement of hosts of conversions, one is obliged to doubt not only the sincerity of the converted, but the morality of the methods. Nevertheless, the expenditure of one million dollars a year in Japan for one hundred years might produce very large results, the nature of which may be readily conceived, though scarcely admired; and the existing weakness of the native religions, both in regard to educational and financial means of self-defense, tempts aggression. Fortunately there now seems to be more than a mere hope that the Imperial Government will come to the aid of Buddhism in matters educational. On the other hand, there is at least a faint possibility that Christendom, at no very distant era, may conclude that her wealthiest missions are becoming transformed into enormous mutual benefit societies.

VII

The idea that Japan would throw open her interior to foreign industrial enterprise, soon after the beginning of Meiji, proved as fallacious as the dream of her sudden conversion to Christianity. The country remained, and still remains, practically closed against foreign settlement. The Government itself had never seemed inclined to pursue a conservative policy, and had made various attempts to bring about such a revision of treaties as would have made Japan a new field for large investments of Western capital Events, however, proved that the national course was not to be controlled by statecraft only, but was to be directed by something much less liable to error,—the Race-Instinct.

The world's greatest philosopher, writing in 1867, uttered this judgment: "Of the way in which disintegrations are liable to be set up in a society that has evolved to the limit of its type, and reached a state of moving equilibrium, a good illustration is furnished by Japan. The finished fabric into which its people had organized themselves maintained an almost constant state so long as it was preserved from fresh external forces. But as soon as it received an impact from European civilization,—partly by armed aggression, partly by commercial impulse, partly by the influence of ideas,—this fabric began to fall to pieces. There is now in progress a political dissolution. Probably a political reorganization will follow; but, be this as it may, the change thus far produced by outer action is a change towards dissolution,—a change from integrated motions to disintegrated motions."[1]

The political reorganization suggested by Mr. Spencer not only followed rapidly, but seemed more than likely to prove all that could be desired, providing the new formative process were not seriously and suddenly interfered with. Whether it would be interfered with by treaty revision, however, appeared a very doubtful question. While some Japanese politicians worked earnestly for the removal of every obstacle to foreign settlement in the interior, others felt that such settlement would mean a fresh introduction into the yet unstable social organism of disturbing elements sure to produce new disintegrations. The argument of the former was that by the advocated revision of existing treaties the revenue of the Empire could be much increased, and that the probable number of foreign settlers would be quite small. But conservative thinkers considered that the real danger of opening the country to foreigners was not the danger of the influx of numbers; and on this point the Race-Instinct agreed with them. It comprehended the peril only in a vague way, but in a way that touched the truth.

One side of that truth ought to be familiar to Americans,—the Occidental side. The Occidental has discovered that, under any conditions of fair play, he cannot compete with the Oriental in the struggle for life: he has fully confessed the fact, both in Australia and in the United States, by the passage of laws to protect himself against Asiatic emigration. For outrages upon Chinese or Japanese immigrants he has nevertheless offered a host of absurd "moral reasons." The only true reason can be formulated in six words: The Oriental can underlive the Occidental. Now in Japan the other face of the question was formulated thus: The Occidental can overlive the Oriental[2] under certain favorable conditions. One condition would be a temperate climate; the other, and the more important, that, in addition to full rights of competition, the Occidental should have power for aggression. Whether he would use such power was not a common-sense question: the real question was, could he use it? And this answered in the affirmative, all discussion as to the nature of his possible future policy of aggrandizement—whether industrial, financial, political, or all three in one—were pure waste of time. It was enough to know that he might eventually find ways and means to master, if not to supplant, the native race; crushing opposition, paralyzing competition by enormous combinations of capital, monopolizing resources, and raising the standard of living above the native capacity. Elsewhere various weaker races had vanished or were vanishing under Anglo-Saxon domination. And in a country so poor as Japan, who could give assurance that the mere admission of foreign capital did not constitute a national danger? Doubtless Japan would never have to fear conquest by any single Western power: she could hold her own, on her own soil, against any one foreign nation. Neither would she have to face the danger of invasion by a combination of military powers: the mutual jealousies of the Occident would render impossible any attack for the mere purpose of territorial acquisition. But she might reasonably fear that, by prematurely opening her interior to foreign settlement, she would condemn herself to the fate of Hawaii,—that her land would pass into alien ownership, that her politics would be regulated by foreign influence, that her independence would become merely nominal, that her ancient empire would eventually become transformed into a sort of cosmopolitan industrial republic.

Such were the ideas fiercely discussed by opposite parties until the eve of the war with China. Meanwhile the Government had been engaged upon difficult negotiations. To open the country in the face of the anti-foreign reaction seemed in the highest degree dangerous; yet to have the treaties revised without opening the country seemed impossible. It was evident that the steady pressure of the Western powers upon Japan was to be maintained unless their hostile combination could be broken either by diplomacy or by force. The new treaty with England, devised by the shrewdness of Aoki, met the dilemma. By this treaty the country is to be opened; but British subjects cannot own land. They can even hold land only on leases terminating, according to Japanese law, ipso facto with the death of the lessor. No coasting-trade is permitted them—not even to some of the old treaty ports; and all other trade is to be heavily taxed. The foreign concessions are to revert to Japan; British settlers pass under Japanese jurisdiction; England, in fact, loses everything, and Japan gains all by this treaty.

The first publication of the articles stupefied the English merchants, who declared themselves betrayed by the mother-country,—legally tied hand and foot and delivered into Oriental bondage. Some declared their resolve to leave the country before the treaty should be put in force. Certainly Japan may congratulate herself upon her diplomacy. The country is, indeed, to be opened; but the conditions have been made such as not only to deter foreign capital seeking investment, but as even to drive existing capital away. Should similar conditions be obtained from other powers, Japan will have much more than regained all that she lost by former treaties contrived to her disadvantage. The Aoki document surely represents the highest possible feat of jiujutsu in diplomacy.

But no one can well predict what may occur before this or any other new treaty be put into operation. It is still uncertain whether Japan will ultimately win all her ends by jiujutsu, although never in history did any race display such courage and such genius in facing colossal odds. Within the memory of men not yet old, Japan has developed her military power to a par with that of more than one country of Europe; industrially she is fast becoming a competitor of Europe in the markets of the East; educationally she has placed herself also in the front rank of progress, having established a system of schools less costly but scarcely less efficient than those of any Western country. And she has done this in spite of being steadily robbed each year by unjust treaties, in spite of enormous losses by floods and earthquakes, in spite of political troubles at home, in spite of the efforts of foreign proselytizers to sap the national spirit, and in spite of the extraordinary poverty of her people.

VIII

Should Japan fail in her glorious purpose, her misfortune will certainly not be owing to any lack of national spirit. That quality she possesses in a degree without existing modern parallel,—in a degree that so trite a word as "patriotism" is utterly powerless to represent. However psychologists may theorize on the absence or the limitations of personal individuality among the Japanese, there can be no question at all that, as a nation, Japan possesses an individuality much stronger than our own. Indeed we may doubt whether Western civilization has not cultivated the qualities of the individual even to the destruction of national feeling.

On the topic of duty the entire people has but one mind. Any schoolboy will say to you, if questioned about this subject: "The duty of every Japanese to our Emperor is to help to make our country strong and wealthy, and to help to defend and preserve our national independence." All know the danger. All are morally and physically trained to meet it. Every public school gives its students a preparatory course of military discipline; every town has its bataillons scolaires. Even the children too young to be regularly drilled are daily taught to sing in chorus the ancient songs of loyalty and the modern songs of war. And new patriot songs are composed at regular intervals, and introduced by Government approval into the schools and the camps. It is quite an experience to hear four hundred students chanting one of these at the school in which I teach. The young men are all in uniform on such occasions, and marshaled in military rank. The commanding officer gives the order to "mark time," and all the feet begin to beat the ground together, with a sound as of a drum-roll. Then the leader sings a verse, and the students repeat it with surprising spirit, throwing a peculiar emphasis always on the last syllable of each line, so that the vocal effect is like a crash of musketry. It is a very Oriental, but also a very impressive manner of chanting: you can hear the fierce heart of Old Japan beating through every Word. But still more impressive is the same kind of singing by the soldiery. And at this very moment, while writing these lines, I hear from the ancient castle of Kumamoto, like a pealing of thunder, the evening song of its garrison of eight thousand men, mingled with the long, sweet, melancholy calling of a hundred bugles.[1]

The Government never relaxes its efforts to keep aglow the old sense of loyalty and love of country. New festivals have lately been established to this noble end; and the old ones are celebrated with increasing fervor each succeeding year. Always on the Emperor's birthday, His Imperial Majesty's photograph is solemnly saluted in all the public schools and public offices of the Empire, with appropriate songs and ceremonies.[2] Occasionally some students, under missionary instigation, refuse this simple tribute of loyalty and gratitude, on the extraordinary ground that they are "Christians," and thus get themselves ostracized by their comrades—sometimes to such an extent that they find it unpleasant to remain in the school. Then the missionaries write home to sectarian papers some story about the persecution of Christians in Japan, "for refusing to worship an Idol of the Emperor"![3] Such incidents are, of course, infrequent, and serve only to indicate those methods by which the foreign evangelizers manage to defeat the real purpose of their mission.

Probably their fanatical attacks, not only upon the native spirit, the native religion, and the native code of ethics, but even upon the native dress and customs, may partly account for some recent extraordinary displays of national feeling by the Japanese Christians themselves. Some have openly expressed their desire to dispense altogether with the presence of foreign proselytizers, and to create a new and peculiar Christianity, to be essentially Japanese and essentially national in spirit. Others have gone much further,—demanding that all mission schools, churches, and other property, now held (to satisfy or evade law) in Japanese names, shall be made over in fact as well as name to Japanese Christians, as a proof of the purity of the motives professed. And in sundry cases it has already been found necessary to surrender mission schools altogether to native direction.

I spoke in a former paper of the splendid enthusiasm with which the entire nation had seconded the educational efforts and purposes of the Government.[4] Not less zeal and self-denial have been shown in aid of the national measures of self-defense. The Emperor himself having set the example, by devoting a large part of his private income to the purchase of ships-of-war, no murmur was excited by the edict requiring one tenth of all government salaries for the same purpose. Every military or naval officer, every professor or teacher, and nearly every employee of the Civil Service[5] thus contributes monthly to the naval defense. Minister, peer, or member of Parliament, is no more exempt than the humblest post-office clerk. Besides these contributions by edict, to continue for six years, generous donations are voluntarily made by rich land-owners, merchants, and hankers throughout the Empire. For, in order to save herself, Japan must become strong quickly: the outer pressure upon her is much too serious to admit of delay. Her efforts are almost incredible, and their success is not improbable. But the odds against her are vast; and she may—stumble. Will she stumble? It is very hard to predict. But a future misfortune could scarcely be the result of any weakening of the national spirit. It would be far more likely to occur as a result of political mistakes,—of rash self-confidence.

IX

It still remains to ask what is the likely fate of the old morality in the midst of all this absorption, assimilation, and reaction. And I think an answer is partly suggested in the following conversation which I had recently with a student of the University. It is written from memory, and is therefore not exactly verbatim, but has interest as representing the thought of the new generation—-witnesses of the vanishing of the gods:—

"Sir, what was your opinion when you first came to this country, about the Japanese? Please to be quite frank with me."

"The young Japanese of to-day?"

"No."

"Then you mean those who still follow the ancient customs, and maintain the ancient forms of courtesy,—the delightful old men, like your former Chinese teacher, who still represent the old samurai spirit?"

"Yes. Mr. A—— is an ideal samurai. I mean such as he."

"I thought them all that is good and noble. They seemed to me just like their own gods."

"And do you still think so well of them?"

"Yes. And the more I see the Japanese of the new generation, the more I admire the men of the old."

"We also admire them. But, as a foreigner, you must also have observed their defects."

"What defects?"

"Defects in practical knowledge of the Western kind."

"But to judge the men of one civilization by the standard requirements of another, which is totally different in organization, would be unjust. It seems to me that the more perfectly a man represents his own civilization, the more we must esteem him as a citizen, and as a gentleman. And judged by their own standards, which were morally very high, the old Japanese appear to me almost perfect men."

"In what respect?"

"In kindness, in courtesy, in heroism, in self-control, in power of self-sacrifice, in filial piety, in simple faith, and in the capacity to be contented with a little."

"But would such qualities be sufficient to assure practical success in the struggle of Western life?"

"Not exactly; but some of them would assist."

"The qualities really necessary for practical success in Western life are just those qualities wanting to the old Japanese—are they not?"

"I think so."

"And our old society cultivated those qualities of unselfishness, and courtesy, and benevolence which you admire, at the sacrifice of the individual. But Western society cultivates the individual by unrestricted competition,—competition in the power of thinking and acting."

"I think that is true."

"But in order that Japan be able to keep her place among nations, she must adopt the industrial and commercial methods of the West. Her future depends upon her industrial development; but there can be no development if we continue to follow our ancient morals and manners."

"Why?"

"Not to be able to compete with the West means ruin; but to compete with the West we must follow the methods of the West; and these are quite contrary to the old morality."

"Perhaps."

"I do not think it can be doubted. To do any kind of business upon a very large scale, men must not be checked by the idea that no advantage should be sought which could injure the business of others. And on the other hand, wherever there is no restraint on competition, men who hesitate to compete because of mere kindliness of heart, must fail. The law of the struggle is that the strong and active shall win, the weak and the foolish and the indifferent lose. But our old morality condemned such competition."

"That is true."

"Then, Sir, no matter how good the old morality, we cannot make any great industrial progress, nor even preserve our national independence, by following it. We must forsake our past. We must substitute law for morality."

"But it is not a good substitute."

"It has been a good substitute in the West, if we can judge by the material greatness and power of England. We must learn in Japan to be moral by reason, instead of being moral by emotion. A knowledge of the moral reason of law is itself a moral knowledge."

"For you, and those who study cosmic law, perhaps. But what of the common people?"

"They will try to follow the old religion; they will continue to trust in their gods. But life will, perhaps, become more difficult for them. They were happy in the ancient days."

The foregoing essay was written two years ago. Later political events and the signing of new treaties obliged me to remodel it last year; and now, while the proofs are passing through my hands, the events of the war with China compel some further remarks. What none could have predicted in 1893 the whole world recognizes in 1895 with astonishment and with admiration. Japan has won in her jiujutsu. Her autonomy is practically restored, her place among civilized nations seems to be assured: she has passed forever out of Western tutelage. What neither her arts nor her virtues could ever have gained for her, she has obtained by the very first display of her new scientific powers of aggression and destruction.

Not a little has been hastily said about long secret preparation for the war made by Japan, and about the flimsiness of her pretexts for entering upon it. I believe that the purposes of her military preparations were never other than those indicated in the preceding chapter. It was to recover her independence that Japan steadily cultivated her military strength for twenty-five years. But successive pulses of popular reaction against foreign influence during that period—each stronger than the preceding—warned the Government of the nation's growing consciousness of power and of its ever-increasing irritation against the treaties. The reaction of 1893-94 took so menacing a form through the House of Representatives that the dissolution of the Diet became an immediate necessity. But even repeated parliamentary dissolutions could only have postponed the issue. It has since been averted partly by the new treaties, and partly by the sudden loosening of the Empire's military force against China. Should it not be obvious that only the merciless industrial and political pressure exercised by a combined Occident against Japan really compelled this war,—as a manifestation of force in the direction of least resistance? Happily that manifestation has been effectual. Japan has proved herself able to hold her own against the world. She has no wish to break her industrial relations with the Occident unless further imposed upon; but with the military revival of her Empire it is almost certain that the day of Occidental influence upon her—whether direct or indirect—is definitely over. Further anti-foreign reaction may be expected in the natural order of things,—not necessarily either violent or unreasonable, but embodying the fullest reassertion of national individuality. Some change even in the form of government is not impossible, considering the questionable results of experimentation with Constitutional Government made by a people accustomed for untold centuries to autocratic rule. But the fallacy of Sir Harry Parkes's prediction that Japan would become "a South American republic" warns against ventures to anticipate the future of this wonderful and enigmatic race.

It is true that the war is not yet over;—but the ultimate triumph of Japan seems beyond doubt,—even allowing for the formidable chances of a revolution in China. The world is already asking with some anxiety what will come next? Perhaps the compulsion of the most peaceable and most conservative of all nations, under both Japanese and Occidental pressure, to really master our arts of war in self-defense. After that perhaps a great military awakening of China, who would be quite likely, under the same circumstances as made New Japan, to turn her arms South and West. For possible ultimate consequences, consult Dr. Pearson's recent book, National Character.

It is to be remembered that the art of jiujutsu was invented in China. And the West has yet to reckon with China,—China, the ancient teacher of Japan,—China, over whose changeless millions successive storms of conquest have passed only as a wind over reeds. Under compulsion, indeed, she may be forced, like Japan, to defend her integrity by jiujutsu. But the end of that prodigious jiujutsu might have results the most serious for the entire world. It might be reserved for China to avenge all those aggressions, extortions, exterminations, of which the colonizing West has been guilty in dealing with feebler races.

Already thinkers, summarizing the experience of the two great colonizing nations,—thinkers not to be ignored, both French and English,—have predicted that the earth will never be fully dominated by the races of the West, and that the future belongs to the Orient. Such, too, are the convictions of many who have learned by long sojourn in the East to see beneath the surface of that strange humanity so utterly removed from us in thought,—to comprehend the depth and force of its tides of life,—to understand its immeasurable capacities of assimilation,—to discern its powers of self-adaptation to almost any environment between the arctic and antarctic circles. And in the judgment of such observers nothing less than the extermination of a race comprising more than one third of the world's population could now assure us even of the future of our own civilization.

Perhaps, as has been recently averred by Dr. Pearson, the long history of Western expansion and aggression is even now approaching its close. Perhaps our civilization has girdled the earth only to force the study of our arts of destruction and our arts of industrial competition upon races much more inclined to use them against us than for us. Even to do this we had to place most of the world under tribute,—so colossal were the powers needed. Perhaps we could not have attempted less, because the tremendous social machinery we have created, threatens, like the Demon of the old legend, to devour us in the same hour that we can find no more tasks for it.

A wondrous creation, indeed, this civilization of ours,—ever growing higher out of an abyss of ever-deepening pain; but it seems also to many not less monstrous than wonderful. That it may crumble suddenly in a social earthquake has long been the evil dream of those who dwell in its summits. That as a social structure it cannot endure, by reason of its moral foundation, is the teaching of Oriental wisdom.

Certainly the results of its labors cannot pass away till man shall have fully played out the drama of his existence upon this planet. It has resurrected the past;—it has revived the languages of the dead;—it has wrested countless priceless secrets from Nature;—it has analyzed suns and vanquished space and time;—it has compelled the invisible to become visible;—it has torn away all veils save the veil of the Infinite;—it has founded ten thousand systems of knowledge;—it has expanded the modern brain beyond the cubic capacity of the mediæval skull;—it has evolved the most noble, even if it has also evolved the most detestable, forms of individuality;—it has developed the most exquisite sympathies and the loftiest emotions known to man, even though it has developed likewise forms of selfishness and of suffering impossible in other eras. Intellectually it has grown beyond the altitude of the stars. That it must, in any event, bear to the future a relation incomparably vaster than that of Greek civilization to the past, is impossible to disbelieve.

But more and more each year it exemplifies the law that the greater the complexity of an organism, the greater also its susceptibility to fatal hurt Always, as its energies increase, is there evolved within it a deeper, a keener, a more exquisitely ramified sensibility to every shock or wound,—to every exterior force of change. Already the mere results of a drought or a famine in the remotest parts of the earth, the destruction of the smallest centre of supply, the exhaustion of a mine, the least temporary stoppage of any commercial vein or artery, the slightest pressure upon any industrial nerve, may produce disintegrations that carry shocks of pain into every portion of the enormous structure. And the wondrous capacity of that structure to oppose exterior forces by corresponding changes within itself would appear to be now endangered by internal changes of a totally different character. Certainly our civilization is developing the individual more and more. But is it not now developing him much as artificial heat and colored light and chemical nutrition might develop a plant under glass? Is it not rapidly evolving millions into purely special fitness for conditions impossible to maintain,—of luxury without limit for the few, of merciless servitude to steel and steam for the many? To such doubts the reply has been given that social transformations will supply the means of providing against perils, and of recuperating all losses. That, for a time at least, social reforms will work miracles is much more than a hope. But the ultimate problem of our future seems to be one that no conceivable social change can happily solve,—not even supposing possible the establishment of an absolutely perfect communism,—because the fate of the higher races seems to depend upon their true value in the future economy of Nature. To the query, "Are we not the Superior Race?"—we may emphatically answer "Yes;" but this affirmative will not satisfactorily answer a still more important question, "Are we the fittest to survive?"

Wherein consists the fitness for survival? In the capacity of self-adaptation to any and every environment;—in the instantaneous ability to face the unforeseen;—in the inherent power to meet and to master all opposing natural influences. And surely not in the mere capacity to adapt ourselves to factitious environments of our own invention, or to abnormal influences of our own manufacture,—but only in the simple power to live. Now in this simple power of living, our so-called higher races are immensely inferior to the races of the Far East. Though the physical energies and the intellectual resources of the Occidental exceed those of the Oriental, they can be maintained only at an expense totally incommensurate with the racial advantage. For the Oriental has proved his ability to study and to master the results of our science upon a diet of rice, and on as simple a diet can learn to manufacture and to utilize our most complicated inventions. But the Occidental cannot even live except at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of twenty Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies the secret of our fatal weakness. Our physical machinery requires a fuel too costly to pay for the running of it in a perfectly conceivable future period of race-competition and pressure of population.

Before, and very probably since, the apparition of Man, various races of huge and wonderful creatures, now extinct, lived on this planet. They were not all exterminated by the attacks of natural enemies: many seem to have perished simply by reason of the enormous costliness of their structures at a time when the earth was forced to become less prodigal of her gifts. Even so it may be that the Western Races will perish—because of the cost of their existence. Having accomplished their uttermost, they may vanish from the face of the world,—supplanted by peoples better fitted for survival.

Just as we have exterminated feebler races by merely overliving them,—by monopolizing and absorbing, almost without conscious effort, everything necessary to their happiness,—so may we ourselves be exterminated at last by races capable of underliving us, of monopolizing all our necessities; races more patient, more self-denying, more fertile, and much less expensive for Nature to support. These would doubtless inherit our wisdom, adopt our more useful inventions, continue the best of our industries,—perhaps even perpetuate what is most worthy to endure in our sciences and our arts. But they would scarcely regret our disappearance any more than we ourselves regret the extinction of the dinotherium or the ichthyosaurus.

VIII

THE RED BRIDAL

Falling in love at first sight is less common in Japan than in the West; partly because of the peculiar constitution of Eastern society, and partly because much sorrow is prevented by early marriages which parents arrange. Love suicides, on the other hand, are not infrequent; but they have the particularity of being nearly always double. Moreover, they must be considered, in the majority of instances, the results of improper relationships. Still, there are honest and brave exceptions; and these occur usually in country districts. The love in such a tragedy may have evolved suddenly out of the most innocent and natural boy-and-girl friendship, and may have a history dating back to the childhood of the victims. But even then there remains a very curious difference between a Western double suicide for love and a Japanese jōshi. The Oriental suicide is not the result of a blind, quick frenzy of pain. It is not only cool and methodical: it is sacramental. It involves a marriage of which the certificate is death. The twain pledge themselves to each other in the presence of the gods, write their farewell letters, and die. No pledge can be more profoundly sacred than this. And therefore, if it should happen that, by sudden outside interference and by medical skill, one of the pair is snatched from death, that one is bound by the most solemn obligation of love and honor to cast away life at the first possible opportunity. Of course, if both are saved, all may go well. But it were better to commit any crime of violence punishable with half a hundred years of state prison than to become known as a man who, after pledging his faith to die with a girl, had left her to travel to the Meido alone. The woman who should fail in her vow might be partially forgiven; but the man who survived a jōshi through interference, and allowed himself to live on because his purpose was once frustrated, would be regarded all his mortal days as a perjurer, a murderer, a bestial coward, a disgrace to human nature. I knew of one such case—but I would now rather try to tell the story of an humble love affair which happened at a village in one of the eastern provinces.

I

The village stands on the bank of a broad but very shallow river, the stony bed of which is completely covered with water only during the rainy season. The river traverses an immense level of rice-fields, open to the horizon north and south, but on the west walled in by a range of blue peaks, and on the east by a chain of low wooded hills. The village itself is separated from these hills only by half a mile of rice-fields; and its principal cemetery, the adjunct of a Buddhist temple dedicated to Kwannon-of-the-Eleven-Faces, is situated upon a neighboring summit. As a distributing centre, the village is not unimportant. Besides several hundred thatched dwellings of the ordinary rustic style, it contains one whole street of thriving two-story shops and inns with handsome tiled roofs. It possesses also a very picturesque ujigami, or Shintō parish temple, dedicated to the Sun-Goddess, and a pretty shrine, in a grove of mulberry-trees, dedicated to the Deity of Silkworms.

There was born in this village, in the seventh year of Meiji, in the house of one Uchida, a dyer, a boy called Tarō. His birthday happened to be an aku-nichi, or unlucky day,—the seventh of the eighth month, by the ancient Calendar of Moons. Therefore his parents, being old-fashioned folk, feared and sorrowed. But sympathizing neighbors tried to persuade them that everything was as it should be, because the calendar had been changed by the Emperor's order, and according to the new calendar the day was a kitsu-nichi, or lucky day. These representations somewhat lessened the anxiety of the parents; but when they took the child to the ujigami, they made the gods a gift of a very large paper lantern, and besought earnestly that all harm should be kept away from their boy. The kannushi, or priest, repeated the archaic formulas required, and waved the sacred gohei above the little shaven head, and prepared a small amulet to be suspended about the infant's neck; after which the parents visited the temple of Kwannon on the hill, and there also made offerings, and prayed to all the Buddhas to protect their first-born.

II

When Tarō was six years old, his parents decided to send him to the new elementary school which had been built at a short distance from the village. Tarō's grandfather bought him some writing-brushes, paper, a book, and a slate, and early one morning led him by the hand to the school. Tarō felt very happy, because the slate and the other things delighted him like so many new toys, and because everybody had told him that the school was a pleasant place, where he would have plenty of time to play. Moreover, his mother had promised to give him many cakes when he should come home.

As soon as they reached the school,—a big two-story building with glass windows,—a servant showed them into a large bare apartment, where a serious-looking man was seated at a desk. Tarō's grandfather bowed low to the serious-looking man, and addressed him as Sensei, and humbly requested him to teach the little fellow kindly. The Sensei rose up, and bowed in return, and spoke courteously to the old man. He also put his hand on Tarō's head, and said nice things. But Taro became all at once afraid. When his grandfather had bid him good-by, he grew still more afraid, and would have liked to run away home; but the master took him into a large, high, white room, full of girls and boys sitting on benches, and showed him a bench, and told him to sit down. All the boys and girls turned their heads to look at Tarō, and whispered to each other, and laughed. Tarō thought they were laughing at him, and began to feel very miserable. A big bell rang; and the master, who had taken his place on a high platform at the other end of the room, ordered silence in a tremendous way that terrified Tarō. All became quiet, and the master began to speak. Tarō thought he spoke most dreadfully. He did not say that school was a pleasant place: he told the pupils very plainly that it was not a place for play, but for hard work. He told them that study was painful, but that they must study in spite of the pain and the difficulty. He told them about the rules which they must obey, and about the punishments for disobedience or carelessness. When they all became frightened and still, he changed his voice altogether, and began to talk to them like a kind father,—promising to love them just like his own little ones. Then he told them how the school had been built by the august command of His Imperial Majesty, that the boys and girls of the country might become wise men and good women, and how dearly they should love their noble Emperor, and be happy even to give their lives for his sake. Also he told them how they should love their parents, and how hard their parents had to work for the means of sending them to school, and how wicked and ungrateful it would be to idle during study-hours. Then he began to call them each by name, asking questions about what he had said.

Tarō had heard only a part of the master's discourse. His small mind was almost entirely occupied by the fact that all the boys and girls had looked at him and laughed when he had first entered the room. And the mystery of it all was so painful to him that he could think of little else, and was therefore quite unprepared when the master called his name.

"Uchida Tarō, what do you like best in the world?"

Tarō started, stood up, and answered frankly,—

"Cake."

All the boys and girls again looked at him and laughed; and the master asked reproachfully, "Uchida Tarō, do you like cake more than you like your parents? Uchida Tarō, do you like cake better than your duty to His Majesty our Emperor?"

Then Tarō knew that he had made some great mistake; and his face became very hot, and all the children laughed, and he began to cry. This only made them laugh still more; and they kept on laughing until the master again enforced silence, and put a similar question to the next pupil. Tarō kept his sleeve to his eyes, and sobbed.

The bell rang. The master told the children they would receive their first writing-lesson during the next class-hour from another teacher, but that they could first go out and play for a while. He then left the room; and the boys and girls all ran out into the school-yard to play, taking no notice whatever of Tarō. The child felt more astonished at being thus ignored than he had felt before on finding himself an object of general attention. Nobody except the master had yet spoken one word to him; and now even the master seemed to have forgotten his existence. He sat down again on his little bench, and cried and cried; trying all the while not to make a noise, for fear the children would come back to laugh at him.

Suddenly a hand was laid upon his shoulder: a sweet voice was speaking to him; and turning his head, he found himself looking into the most caressing pair of eyes he had ever seen,—the eyes of a little girl about a year older than he.

"What is it?" she asked him tenderly.

Tarō sobbed and snuffled helplessly for a moment, before he could answer: "I am very unhappy here. I want to go home."

"Why?" questioned the girl, slipping an arm about his neck.

"They all hate me; they will not speak to me or play with me."

"Oh no!" said the girl. "Nobody dislikes you at all. It is only because you are a stranger. When I first went to school, last year, it was just the same with me. You must not fret."

"But all the others are playing; and I must sit in here," protested Tarō.

"Oh no, you must not. You must come and play with me. I will be your playfellow. Come!"

Taro at once began to cry out loud. Self-pity and gratitude and the delight of newfound sympathy filled his little heart so full that he really could not help it. It was so nice to be petted for crying.

But the girl only laughed, and led him out of the room quickly, because the little mother soul in her divined the whole situation. "Of course you may cry, if you wish," she said; "but you must play, too!" And oh, what a delightful play they played together!

But when school was over, and Tarō's grandfather came to take him home, Tarō began to cry again, because it was necessary that he should bid his little playmate good-by.

The grandfather laughed, and exclaimed, "Why, it is little Yoshi,—Miyahara O-Yoshi! Yoshi can come along with us, and stop at the house a while. It is on her way home."

At Tarō's house the playmates ate the promised cake together; and O-Yoshi mischievously asked, mimicking the master's severity, "Uchida Tarō, do you like cake better than me?"

III

O-Yoshi's father owned some neighboring rice-lands, and also kept a shop in the village. Her mother, a samurai, adopted into the Miyahara family at the time of the breaking up of the military caste, had borne several children, of whom O-Yoshi, the last, was the only survivor. While still a baby, O-Yoshi lost her mother. Miyahara was past middle age; but he took another wife, the daughter of one of his own farmers,—a young girl named Ito O-Tama. Though swarthy as new copper, O-Tama was a remarkably handsome peasant girl, tall, strong, and active; but the choice caused surprise, because O-Tama could neither read nor write. The surprise changed to amusement when it was discovered that almost from the time of entering the house she had assumed and maintained absolute control. But the neighbors stopped laughing at Miyahara's docility when they learned more about O-Tama. She knew her husband's interests better than he, took charge of everything, and managed his affairs with such tact that in less than two years she had doubled his income. Evidently, Miyahara had got a wife who was going to make him rich. As a step-mother she bore herself rather kindly, even after the birth of her first boy. O-Yoshi was well cared for, and regularly sent to school.

While the children were still going to school, a long-expected and wonderful event took place. Strange tall men with red hair and beards—foreigners from the West—came down into the valley with a great multitude of Japanese laborers, and constructed a railroad. It was carried along the base of the low hill range, beyond the rice-fields and mulberry groves in the rear of the village; and almost at the angle where it crossed the old road leading to the temple of Kwannon, a small station-house was built; and the name of the village was painted in Chinese characters upon a white signboard erected on a platform. Later, a line of telegraph-poles was planted, parallel with the railroad. And still later, trains came, and shrieked, and stopped, and passed,—nearly shaking the Buddhas in the old cemetery off their lotus-flowers of stone.

The children wondered at the strange, level, ash-strewn way, with its double lines of iron shining away north and south into mystery; and they were awe-struck by the trains that came roaring and screaming and smoking, like storm-breathing dragons, making the ground quake as they passed by. But this awe was succeeded by curious interest,—an interest intensified by the explanations of one of their school-teachers, who showed them, by drawings on the blackboard, how a locomotive engine was made; and who taught them, also, the still more marvelous operation of the telegraph, and told them how the new western capital and the sacred city of Kyoto were to be united by rail and wire, so that the journey between them might be accomplished in less than two days, and messages sent from the one to the other in a few seconds.

Taro and O-Yoshi became very dear friends. They studied together, played together, and visited each other's homes. But at the age of eleven O-Yoshi was taken from school to assist her step-mother in the household; and thereafter Tarō saw her but seldom. He finished his own studies at fourteen, and began to learn his father's trade. Sorrows came. After having given him a little brother, his mother died; and in the same year, the kind old grandfather who had first taken him to school followed her; and after these things the world seemed to him much less bright than before. Nothing further changed his life till he reached his seventeenth year. Occasionally he would visit the home of the Miyahara, to talk with O-Yoshi. She had grown up into a slender, pretty woman; but for him she was still only the merry playfellow of happier days.

IV

One soft spring day, Tarō found himself feeling very lonesome, and the thought came to him that it would be pleasant to see O-Yoshi. Probably there existed in his memory some constant relation between the sense of lonesomeness in general and the experience of his first schoolday in particular. At all events, something within him—perhaps that a dead mother's love had made, or perhaps something belonging to other dead people—wanted a little tenderness, and he felt sure of receiving the tenderness from O-Yoshi. So he took his way to the little shop. As he approached it, he heard her laugh, and it sounded wonderfully sweet. Then he saw her serving an old peasant, who seemed to be quite pleased, and was chatting garrulously. Tarō had to wait, and felt vexed that he could not at once get O-Yoshi's talk all for himself; but it made him a little happier even to be near her. He looked and looked at her, and suddenly began to wonder why he had never before thought how pretty she was. Yes, she was really pretty,—more pretty than any other girl in the village. He kept on looking and wondering, and always she seemed to be growing prettier. It was very strange; he could not understand it. But O-Yoshi, for the first time, seemed to feel shy under that earnest gaze, and blushed to her little ears. Then Tarō felt quite sure that she was more beautiful than anybody else in the whole world, and sweeter, and better, and that he wanted to tell her so; and all at once he found himself angry with the old peasant for talking so much to O-Yoshi, just as if she were a common person. In a few minutes the universe had been quite changed for Taro, and he did not know it. He only knew that since he last saw her O-Yoshi had become divine; and as soon as the chance came, he told her all his foolish heart, and she told him hers. And they wondered because their thoughts were so much the same; and that was the beginning of great trouble.

V

The old peasant whom Tarō had once seen talking to O-Yoshi had not visited the shop merely as a customer. In addition to his real calling he was a professional nakōdo, or match-maker, and was at that very time acting in the service of a wealthy rice dealer named Okazaki Yaïchirō. Okazaki had seen O-Yoshi, had taken a fancy to her, and had commissioned the nakōdo to find out everything possible about her, and about the circumstances of her family.

Very much detested by the peasants, and even by his more immediate neighbors in the village, was Okazaki Yaïchirō. He was an elderly man, gross, hard-featured, with a loud, insolent manner. He was said to be malignant. He was known to have speculated successfully in rice during a period of famine, which the peasant considers a crime, and never forgives. He was not a native of the ken, nor in any way related to its people, but had come to the village eighteen years before, with his wife and one child, from some western district. His wife had been dead two years, and his only son, whom he was said to have treated cruelly, had suddenly left him, and gone away, nobody knew whither. Other unpleasant stories were told about him. One was that, in his native western province, a furious mob had sacked his house and his godowns, and obliged him to fly for his life. Another was that, on his wedding night, he had been compelled to give a banquet to the god Jizō.

It is still customary in some provinces, on the occasion of the marriage of a very unpopular farmer, to make the bridegroom feast Jizō. A band of sturdy young men force their way into the house, carrying with them a stone image of the divinity, borrowed from the highway or from some neighboring cemetery. A large crowd follows them. They deposit the image in the guest-room, and they demand that ample offerings of food and of saké be made to it at once. This means, of course, a big feast for themselves, and it is more than dangerous to refuse. All the uninvited guests must be served till they can neither eat nor drink any more. The obligation to give such a feast is not only a public rebuke: it is also a lasting public disgrace.

In his old age, Okazaki wished to treat himself to the luxury of a young and pretty wife; but in spite of his wealth he found this wish less easy to gratify than he had expected. Various families had checkmated his proposals at once by stipulating impossible conditions. The Headman of the village had answered, less politely, that he would sooner give his daughter to an oni (demon). And the rice dealer would probably have found himself obliged to seek for a wife in some other district, if he had not happened, after these failures, to notice O-Yoshi. The girl much more than pleased him; and he thought he might be able to obtain her by making certain offers to her people, whom he supposed to be poor. Accordingly, he tried, through the nakōdo, to open negotiations with the Miyahara family.

O-Yoshi's peasant step-mother, though entirely uneducated, was very much the reverse of a simple woman. She had never loved her step-daughter, but was much too intelligent to be cruel to her without reason. Moreover, O-Yoshi was far from being in her way. O-Yoshi was a faithful worker, obedient, sweet-tempered, and very useful in the house. But the same cool shrewdness that discerned O-Yoshi's merits also estimated the girl's value in the marriage market. Okazaki never suspected that he was going to deal with his natural superior in cunning. O-Tama knew a great deal of his history. She knew the extent of his wealth. She was aware of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain a wife from various families, both within and without the village. She suspected that O-Yoshi's beauty might have aroused a real passion, and she knew that an old man's passion might be taken advantage of in a large number of cases. O-Yoshi was not wonderfully beautiful, but she was a really pretty and graceful girl, with very winning ways; and to get another like her, Okazaki would have to travel far. Should he refuse to pay well for the privilege of obtaining such a wife, O-Tama knew of younger men who would not hesitate to be generous. He might have O-Yoshi, but never upon easy terms. After the repulse of his first advances, his conduct would betray him. Should he prove to be really enamored, he could be forced to do more than any other resident of the district could possibly afford. It was therefore highly important to discover the real strength of his inclination, and to keep the whole matter, in the mean time, from the knowledge of O-Yoshi. As the reputation of the nakōdo depended on professional silence, there was no likelihood of his betraying the secret.

The policy of the Miyahara family was settled in a consultation between O-Yoshi's father and her step-mother. Old Miyahara would have scarcely presumed, in any event, to oppose his wife's plans; but she took the precaution of persuading him, first of all, that such a marriage ought to be in many ways to his daughter's interest. She discussed with him the possible financial advantages of the union. She represented that there were, indeed, unpleasant risks, but that these could be provided against by making Okazaki agree to certain preliminary settlements. Then she taught her husband his rôle. Pending negotiations, the visits of Tarō were to be encouraged. The liking of the pair for each other was a mere cobweb of sentiment that could be brushed out of existence at the required moment; and meantime it was to be made use of. That Okazaki should hear of a likely young rival might hasten desirable conclusions.

It was for these reasons that, when Tarō's father first proposed for O-Yoshi in his son's name, the suit was neither accepted nor discouraged. The only immediate objection offered was that O-Yoshi was one year older than Taro, and that such a marriage would be contrary to custom,—which was quite true. Still, the objection was a weak one, and had been selected because of its apparent unimportance.

Okazaki's first overtures were at the same time received in suck a manner as to convey the impression that their sincerity was suspected. The Miyahara refused to understand the nakōdo at all. They remained astonishingly obtuse even to the plainest assurances, until Okazaki found it politic to shape what he thought a tempting offer. Old Miyahara then declared that he would leave the matter in his wife's hands, and abide by her decision.

O-Tama decided by instantly rejecting the proposal, with every appearance of scornful astonishment. She said unpleasant things. There was once a man who wanted to get a beautiful wife very cheap. At last he found a beautiful woman who said she ate only two grains of rice every day. So he married her; and every day she put into her mouth only two grains of rice; and he was happy. But one night, on returning from a journey, he watched her secretly through a hole in the roof, and saw her eating monstrously,—devouring mountains of rice and fish, and putting all the food into a hole in the top of her head under her hair. Then he knew that he had married the Yama-Omba.

O-Tama waited a month for the results of her rebuff,—waited very confidently, knowing how the imagined value of something wished for can be increased by the increase of the difficulty of getting it. And, as she expected, the nakōdo at last reappeared. This time Okazaki approached the matter less condescendingly than before; adding to his first offer, and even volunteering seductive promises. Then she knew she was going to have him in her power. Her plan of campaign was not complicated, but it was founded upon a deep instinctive knowledge of the uglier side of human nature; and she felt sure of success. Promises were for fools; legal contracts involving conditions were traps for the simple. Okazaki should yield up no small portion of his property before obtaining O-Yoshi.

VI

Taro's father earnestly desired his son's marriage with O-Yoshi, and had tried to bring it about in the usual way. He was surprised at not being able to get any definite answer from the Miyahara. He was a plain, simple man; but he had the intuition of sympathetic natures, and the unusually gracious manner of O-Tama, whom he had always disliked, made him suspect that he had nothing to hope. He thought it best to tell his suspicions to Tarō, with the result that the lad fretted himself into a fever. But O-Yoshi's step-mother had no intention of reducing Taro to despair at so early a stage of her plot. She sent kindly worded messages to the house during his illness, and a letter from O-Yoshi, which had the desired effect of reviving all his hopes. After his sickness, he was graciously received by the Miyahara, and allowed to talk to O-Yoshi in the shop. Nothing, however, was said about his father's visit.

The lovers had also frequent chances to meet at the ujigami court, whither O-Yoshi often went with her step-mother's last baby. Even among the crowd of nurse-girls, children, and young mothers, they could exchange a few words without fear of gossip. Their hopes received no further serious check for a month, when O-Taina pleasantly proposed to Tarō's father an impossible pecuniary arrangement. She had lifted a corner of her mask, because Okazaki was struggling wildly in the net she had spread for him, and by the violence of the struggles she knew the end was not far off. O-Yoshi was still ignorant of what was going on; but she had reason to fear that she would never be given to Tarō. She was becoming thinner and paler.

Tarō one morning took his child-brother with him to the temple court, in the hope of an opportunity to chat with O-Yoshi. They met; and he told her that he was feeling afraid. He had found that the little wooden amulet which his mother had put about his neck when he was a child had been broken within the silken cover.